FCC Correspondence

After reading the recently signed Comcast contract, and having others validate my belief that it is a poor contract that will leave much of Tuolumne County without wireline Broadband for ten years, I sent an email to Michael Copps of the FCC. FCC Commissioner Copps had recently written an op-ed piece in the Washington Post regarding the state of Broadband in the United States. After my email is the link to his op-ed piece.

Commissioner Copps,

I applaud your stance in the attached article. Tuolumne County California just signed a new contract with Comcast to upgrade their service. The County was induced to signed the contract quickly by Comcast as they warned the State would take over the contract negotiations starting 2007. The contract is horrible and will leave 40% without Comcast service including Broadband Internet for 10 years. Part of the contract reads that if Comcast completes their upgrade in three years, the five year contract gets extended another five years. Comcast only has to provide service to neighborhoods with 40 connections per cable mile. This equates to one acre parcels or less in size. That leaves us out that are in two and three acre minimum parcels.

AT&T has completed all DSL expansion in our rural county and at least 40% of the homes do not have access to wireline Internet. At&T's answer is for us to sign up with the satellite provider WildBlue.

How can the United States get out of this mess? It is hurting the economy. Young adults want Broadband access even when they go on vacation now. Tourism in rural counties will be hurt in the future as they cannot provide this service in remote areas.

Bob Ingalls

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/07/AR2006110701230.html

His personal reply was marked Not Public: For Internal Use Only, so I will paraphrase his reply.

He thanked me for taking the time to get in touch. Commissioner Copps believes the way we'll get out of this is to develop a national strategy, a real commitment, to get broadband out to everybody. He suggested that broadband be funded under the Universal Service Fund, but there are other ways, too. He did not state what the other ways are. He further stated that the important thing is to make the commitment to this important infrastructure. He also believes that Broadband is the central infrastructure-building challenge of our time.

While it is encouraging that we have an enlightened FCC Commissioner, there are four other FCC Commissioners and if Commissioner Copps can't get anything done we are going to have to do it ourselves.